The Navy is building fleets of unmanned 'swarmboats' that can overwhelm and confuse enemies

US NavySee that unmanned military boat cruising through Chesapeake Bay? That’s a new vessel being created by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) that’s been a breakthrough in autonomous naval missions.

In October, ONR took to Chesapeake Bay to show off its new technology, which uses software, radar, and a myriad of environmental sensors to perform patrol missions with little more than remote human supervision. The Navy’s new “swarmboats” aren’t being developed to replace its sailors and marines, however. Instead, they’re intended to assist in duties that might be too dull or too dangerous.

The ONR’s most recent demonstration involved a fleet of these ships patrolling a large swath of open water. When an unknown ship entered the designated space, the swarmboats collectively determined which would approach the vessel to check if it was a threat; the approaching swarmboat then communicated with the rest of the swarm to get help in tracking the unknown vessel, trailing it if needed. Other ships continued to patrol the area, and updates were sent continuously to a human supervisor nearby.

October’s swarmboat demonstration built upon a 2014 demonstration of the autonomy technology Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS), where the swarmboats were tasked with escorting a Navy warship in Virginia’s James River. “The demonstration showed some remarkable advances in autonomous capabilities,” Molina added. “While previous work had focused on autonomous protection of high-value ships, this time we were focused on harbor approach defense.”

For future missions, ONR is looking to equip the Navy with a military force of both manned and unmanned systems. ONR will begin testing these swarmboats for use in dangerous missions wherein extra protection is needed for soldiers. The autonomous boats — designed to swarm enemies — are capable of doing that in great numbers at the fraction of a cost it would take a single manned warship, ONR said.

Many companies talk about self-driving cars, but Lyft and Aptiv are already using a fleet of them to transport paying customers in Las Vegas. Hop in for a close look at the tech of autonomous cars, and the challenges they face.

With a reported launch in 2019, AMD is focusing on the mid-range market with its next-generation Navi GPU. Billed as a successor to Polaris, Navi promises to deliver better performance to consoles, like Sony's PlayStation 5.

The length of Saturn's day has always been a challenge to calculate because of the planet's non-solid surface and magnetic field. But now scientists have tracked vibrations in the rings to pin down a final answer.

Tiny robots modeled after bacteria could be used to deliver drugs to hard to reach areas of the human body. Scientists have developed elastic microbots that can change their shape depending on their environment.

The number of asteroids pummeling Earth jumped dramatically around 290 million years ago. By looking at Moon craters, scientists discovered that d the number of asteroid impacts on both Earth and the Moon increased by two to three times.

Saturn's rings are younger than previously believed, according to new data gathered from the Cassini mission. The rings are certainly less than 100 million years old and perhaps as young as 10 million years old.

Scientists from Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology have developed a system which can continuously produce electrical energy and hydrogen by dissolving carbon dioxide in an aqueous solution.

Our Sun will gradually fade before expanding into a red giant at the end of its life. But larger mass stars undergo extreme explosive events called hypernovas when they die which outshine their entire galaxies.

Airbus says advancements in artificial intelligence can help it toward its goal of building a plane capable of fully autonomous flight, though whether passengers can be persuaded to travel in one is another matter entirely.

Amazon workers at its fulfillment centers are using "tech vests" to help protect them from collisions with their robot co-workers. The robots already have obstacle avoidance sensors, but the belt offers another layer of safety.